Private credit is having its first real stress test. Here's what the data actually says.
Global private credit reached $3.5 trillion by the end of 2024. The bubble debate is loud — but most of it treats a set of very different credit strategies as one homogeneous market. We don't. We specialise in senior-secured private credit, and that's all we do.
"Private credit" is not one asset class.
It is at least four.
Corporate direct lending still accounts for roughly 60% of global private credit AUM. The other 40% is asset-based finance, real estate debt, infrastructure debt, and special situations. Each is underwritten differently and behaves differently under stress.
When investors hear "private credit bubble," what they're often hearing about is sponsor-backed direct lending in the U.S. — which is 65% of global AUM, but is not the whole story.
The market is also moving upmarket. In October 2025, Meta and Blue Owl funded the $27 billion Hyperion data-centre campus partly with private debt placed with PIMCO and select bond investors. Private credit is no longer just middle-market buyout finance — it is increasingly part of the financing stack for AI and digital infrastructure.
Where Kilde fits
Kilde lends almost exclusively in asset-based finance — receivables-backed senior secured loans to non-bank lenders in Europe and Asia. Our borrowers serve local consumers, not international trade. The strategy mix matters more than the headline.
"Private credit defaults": which number, and who's counting?
Stress in private credit is often internalised, restructured, or relabeled rather than surfacing as a public bankruptcy. Goldman Sachs Asset Management found 150 European credit events since 2017 across roughly $38 billion of LBO financings — but only four were bankruptcies. The rest were largely debt-for-equity swaps.
That doesn't make private credit safer or riskier than public high yield by default. It means stress is handled earlier, privately, with more lender control — but not necessarily with better recoveries. A Federal Reserve note found post-default value at about 33% for direct loans, versus 52% for syndicated loans and 39% for high-yield bonds.
"Private credit redemption gates": the real liquidity story
The most convincing "bubble" signal in 2026 is not default statistics. It is liquidity packaging. Semi-liquid vehicles — perpetual funds, interval funds, BDCs marketed to private wealth — promise periodic redemptions from loans designed to be held to maturity. When sentiment shifts, that promise meets the asset-liability mismatch.
This is not a 2008-style systemic collapse. 80% of private credit assets are still held in closed-end structures, and fund-level borrowing is modest at about 32% of net AUM. But it is a clear signal: when private credit is packaged as liquid, the liquidity is conditional.
How Kilde's structure handles liquidity
Specialised, senior-secured, and built for this part of the cycle
Kilde occupies one specific corner of private credit. We don't try to be everything.
What we do
What we don't do
Why this matters in 2026
"Private credit is not going away. But the era when it could be marketed as one uniformly resilient asset class should be over. Investors deserve to know which strategy they're in, and how it behaves when stress arrives."
— Radek Jezbera, Co-Founder & CEO
A like-for-like comparison
How Kilde's structure differs from a typical semi-liquid private credit fund.
What "senior-secured private credit on Kilde" actually looks like
questions investors are asking
Not in the 2008 sense. Fund-level borrowing remains modest at about 32% of net AUM and 80% of assets are held in closed-end structures. The bigger risk is that very different strategies — direct lending, asset-based finance, infrastructure debt, special situations — get treated as one homogeneous asset class. Investors who select strategy and manager carefully are in a different position than those buying a generic "private credit" wrapper.
It depends entirely on the measurement framework. Manager-reported non-accrual rates were 1.8–2.2% in 2025 (AIMA). Proskauer's Q4 2025 index printed 2.46%. Houlihan Lokey's broader "proxy default" rate, which includes covenant defaults and amended PIK interest, was 7.4%. Fitch's monitored U.S. cohort, including distressed exchanges, reached 9.2%. The S&P speculative-grade corporate rate was 4.6% in the U.S. and 3.8% in Europe.
In March 2026, Morgan Stanley's North Haven Private Income Fund met only 45.8% of tender requests. BlackRock's HPS Corporate Lending Fund stuck to its 5% repurchase framework when 9.3% of shares were requested. These are not signs of systemic collapse — they are signs that semi-liquid wrappers built on illiquid loans become conditional when sentiment weakens.
Senior-secured private credit benefits from tighter documentation, closer lender control, and more flexible workouts. But low visible default rates do not automatically mean low loss severity — a Federal Reserve note found post-default value of about 33% for direct loans versus 52% for syndicated loans. The honest answer: distress is handled earlier and more privately in private credit, but recovery isn't necessarily better.
We define a default the way an investor would: missed payment, no PIK relabelling, no quiet restructuring. Our 0.0% default rate since inception is calculated on that basis. Combined with 1.6× collateral coverage and monthly covenant checks across 20M+ loan and repayment data points, our exposure profile is structurally different from sponsor-backed direct lending.
We don't run a semi-liquid fund. Investors hold defined-tenor notes (3–36 months) with monthly cash coupons and a known maturity date. There is no quarterly tender mechanism that can be gated, because there is no asset-liability mismatch in the first place.
Kilde is licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (CMS101016) and is open to accredited investors and institutional investors as defined under the Securities and Futures Act (Cap. 289).
Read the data. Then decide.
Private credit deserves serious analysis, not headlines. If you'd like to see the full track record, deal-level performance, and how a senior-secured allocation could fit your portfolio — open an account and we'll walk you through it. There's no obligation, and the data is yours either way.